Pages

Mar 14, 2013

So the first season of the reimagined V wasn't exactly the strongest science fiction drama to hit the airwaves. A lot of the original complexity of the 80's miniseries was lost, primarily due to a rather inept resistance movement acting as our central protagonists. And it didn't help that they had found a way to make Elizabeth Mitchell seem lame despite being totally awesome as Juliet on LOST.

But for one reason or another, the show managed to make it to one more season before it was finally cancelled in 2011.

But we still stuck around to see what they had to offer in this second season. Maybe things would finally speed up in order to make the plots seem more relevant. Maybe the resistance would start to do things that were actually helpful.

And I'm sure a lot of folks wanted to see the original Diana, as played by Jane Badler, join the show and really show folks how you portray an evil alien.

Synopsis:V is a reimagined science fiction drama based on the 1983 miniseries of the same name as originally created by Kenneth Johnson. The reboot was developed by Scott Peters.

At the end of the second season, we saw Anna (Morena Baccarin), unleash "Red Rain" on the Earth along with ordering the rest of her fleet to decloak. With the bulk of her soldier eggs destroyed, Anna's army has been neutralized and thus she needs to take moire direct steps with dealing with humanity. Erica (Elizabeth Mitchell) and the rest of Fifth Column barely survived their last mission and now the world is in chaos because of the weather changes.

While Anna tries to reassure everyone that Red Rain is merely their way of trying to repair the ecological damage done to the planet, Fifth Column finds out the rain's true purpose. The aliens need humans in order to breed, and thus the rain is designed to help tweak physiology to make them more compatible with alien breeding efforts. And we now have the added element of Diana (Jane Badler), Anna's mother. She has been kept prisoner inside Anna's mothership, unknown to most Visitors.

First, the use of CGI in this season certainly stepped up a notch, much to the show's detriment. A lot of the CGI felt rather cheap and obvious, and thus it looked rather awkward to watch the actors move around what was clearly an empty sound stage. Plus the way they end up being rendered is like they're floating awkwardly above the floor, more often than not. There are fan films out there with much better rendering.

Second, Fifth Column remains to be one of the lamest resistance groups ever. While it seemed they were on the right track with trying to kill Anna's growing army in season 1. They create a few more plans to sort of take a stab at taking out strategic targets this time around, but usually they're too distracted trying to figure out what exactly they want to do as an organization.

At the very least, they were on the right track bringing in the character of Diana. While her various philosophical babbling about the power of human emotions was a little silly, Diana presented an interesting foil for Anna and of course made for quite the pot of intrigue once you through in Anna's daughter Lisa (Laura Vandervoort). Yay for her becoming more than just the ridiculous love interest for the idiot character Tyler (Logan Huffman).

But beyond that, the plotting for this second season was kind of nuts. The magical ingredient to help humans support Visitor babies is... phosphorous? And why does that make the sky red? And what's with these silly radical Fifth Column folks who have no strategic sense and just want to make trouble? Why do we still care whether or not the priest still has a job? And the aliens are now obsessed with the human soul? What is this - The Matrix?

Needless to say, I totally understand why the show had to end. I agree that 10 episodes was more than enough instead of the original 13 ordered for this season. And darn it, there just wasn't enough mouse / rat eating in this show to keep fans happy!

So long V. It was interesting to see you try but I don't think you deserve a second life any time soon. Leave that to Veronica Mars or something. This final season only merits 1.5 attempts to make Tyler seem like a sex icon out of a possible 5.